The country that only asks for its children to die is a dead country. The children who knew nothing but it, and would not think of leaving it, are hunting them down individually, so that devastation will be a clear future, and so that the thought of surviving the people’s experience of major battles for the sake of freedom, justice and change, is thinking. Very simple.
* * *
Time involves a new time emerging from its womb, and lessons are shed on its path
The ancient stories and the stories that were an example for an entire generation, and we who witnessed the violent moment of crossing were the bulwark of the old time and the living scepter in the hand of the new time, and for this reason we had to be divided and filled with deep cracks. Before we triumph over a part of us, and what died within us settles at the bottom of the painful times whose madness we witnessed.
The Supreme, as an eternal dictator, wants the only voice heard in his country to be his own, and for all his subjects to follow the path he has set, because he is certain that this is their destiny. But what will happen when he wakes up one day and finds a leaflet posted on the door of the cathedral, written in the form of a decree issued by the dictator himself, instructing the people to hang his head after his death on a pike in the public square, and calling for the killing of all his aides? Will the Almighty succeed in finding out who wrote this post and punishing him?
In this novel, Augusto Roa Bastos gives free rein to the character of José Gaspar de Francia, who ruled Paraguay with an iron fist for nearly three decades, to narrate and dictate, ask and answer, tell stories and incidents, and judge situations and people, in a frenetic narration and a genius, competent construction. This novel is among the 100 most prominent works of literature written in Spanish.
